


The Boids

by the_genderman



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Birds, Gen, Pre-Avengers (2012), Slack: CapRBB Chat, Steve Rogers Feels, Steve Rogers and the 21st Century, defrosted steve, not crack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 16:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 718
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15889464
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_genderman/pseuds/the_genderman
Summary: Steve is fresh out of the ice and he thinks he might be having a few lingering side effects because those can’t beparrotsinBrooklyn, can they?





	The Boids

**Author's Note:**

> In case it’s unclear to anyone, the title “The Boids” is supposed to invoke the Hitchcock movie “The Birds,” but with a New Yawk accent.

Green-Wood Cemetery isn’t exactly everyone’s first destination on the Brooklyn tourism rounds, but Steve isn’t exactly a tourist. Granted, right now he kind of feels like one, having only been out of the ice for barely a week and having had to relearn everything about his hometown. So many things have changed. He knew there wouldn’t be many familiar faces left, but maybe he could at least track down some familiar names.

Most cemetery visitors could be found looking down at the gravestones, not staring open-mouthed into the trees, wondering if they were hallucinating. Not Steve. He pulls out the cellphone S.H.I.E.L.D. set him up with, reminds himself how to find saved phone numbers, and hits the green call button when he finds the one he needs.

“Coulson speaking,” comes the calm, practiced voice on the other end of the phone. Steve hadn’t really given much thought into staying in contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. after they gave him the all-clear and released him into a starter apartment with a smile and a good luck wave, but this? This calls for outside help.

“Hello Agent Coulson,” Steve says. “You said to call if I had any questions or problems, I hope I’m not interrupting anything?”

“No, no, not interrupting. What can I do for you?”

“I think I may need to come in for an appointment with the S.H.I.E.L.D. doctors. I think I might be having some delayed side-effects from having been frozen,” Steve explains, a little hesitantly. He’d thought the serum would take care of everything, but what if it was starting to break down with time? Even now, he knew there were a lot of things S.H.I.E.L.D. either didn’t know or wasn’t telling him.

“Oh dear, that’s not good,” Coulson replies. “What kind of symptoms? I can get Doctor Hopkins on the line if you’d like.”

“I think I might be hallucinating,” Steve says, still staring up into the trees, squinting a little. He blinks a couple times, but no, nothing has changed.

“Can I ask why you believe this?” Coulson asks. “There might be a reasonable explanation.”

“Not unless someone either painted a bunch of pigeons green or transplanted parrots into New York,” Steve says with a half laugh. “And neither of those sound very reasonable.”

“Ah, the Brooklyn parrots,” Coulson says knowingly. “Nope, they’re real.”

“Brooklyn has parrots now?” Steve deadpans.

“Brooklyn has parrots now,” Coulson repeats. Steve can practically hear him nodding. “They’ve even got their own website. It’s brooklynparrots.com, if you’d like to read up on them.”

“Thank you, I think I’ll do that. Sorry to bother you,” Steve replies and ends the call, still staring up at the flock of a few dozen green and gray parrots moving around the trees like they’ve always lived in Brooklyn. Maybe they have. He’s been out of the loop for a _long_ time.

\---------------

That evening finds Steve in his apartment with his laptop and a cup of coffee, reading an article titled “What are Wild Parrots Doing in Brooklyn?” Apparently they’re called either Quaker parrots or monk parakeets, depending on who you ask, and the big Brillo-pad looking clumps in the cemetery trees are their nests. They’re native to Argentina, and were first sighted in Brooklyn in the 1970s.

Parrots. In _Brooklyn_. Steve’s still finding it a little hard to believe, but he saw them with his own eyes, and they were definitely parrots. In Brooklyn. And there was supposed to be a colony at Brooklyn College, too. He hadn’t given much thought about what he was going to do in this century, but maybe he could think about going back to school, taking the classes he couldn’t afford when he was younger. Start drawing again. Get a degree. Say hi to the parrots while he was there. If a bunch of South American parrots could overcome being released into an unfamiliar city with unfamiliar dangers, then he—a native Brooklynite—could figure out how to live in his own city again.

All thanks to a bunch of little green parrots who had claimed a tiny chunk of Brooklyn as their own and confused the hell out of him for about fifteen minutes. Steve smiled.


End file.
